A Corbyn coup
I started getting into political markets a few years ago. The first market I seriously played was the US presidential market in 2004. For the last election over there, I was actually present in the country, which was quite interesting. Since then I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at political markets. The most recent is the next Labour leader. Whether you make or lose money you always learn something from your participation in the market amd the same is the case in this particular market.
After a crushing election defeat I was pretty sure that the Labour Party would choose an appropriate leader, one that had mass appeal across the many different voter types in the UK. Andy Burnham seem to be the man that I thought would get general support and that would appear to have been correct.
However I hadn’t counted on the curious voting mechanism that Labour had introduced which was tied to membership of the party. No doubt seeing an opportunity political opponents and backers of very high prices all appeared to sign up to become Labour members. It seemed obvious that the boat was going to be distorted, but despite that the Labour Party has ploughed on.
The Mirror reported quite clearly the unusual aspect of this vote:-
“Figures shown to Mirror Online suggest there are now around 270,000 fully-fledged Labour members – up more than a third from 194,000 before the General Election. The numbers do not include another 70,000 or so people who’ve signed up to vote for Labour’s next leader without joining the party itself. The rise looks to be the biggest in any single year since 1951, when Clement Attlee lost Number 10 to Tory war hero Winston Churchill.”
I was pretty sure that they were going to modify the way the vote was counted for those eligible to cast a vote, but that didn’t happen. The result of this leadership contest looks like it’s going to be an “interesting” one. Its sort of reminiscent of the ‘Michael Foot era’. My view now is to start looking at markets that would benefit from turmoil in the Labour Party and perhaps a split. I think that’s a possibility as the party tries to establish whether he really wants to be on the far left or just left leaning. After being decimated in Scotland, a party on the far left would be unelectable in large parts of England. It’s going to be interesting!
For Corbyn backers who have got in as high as 980, but generally at lower amounts, it’s a time to celebrate. For political opponents of the far left, they can probably laugh until, well, the’re blue!
I thought this was an insightful commentary: –
https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8eaca74e-579f-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html#axzz3lPRweGuI
If Political markets are of interest to you, then I suggest you bookmark the following which is standard reading for me in these markets: –
https://www.politicalbetting.com/
Category: Alternative markets
